Tender
by Gaeriel
Summary: His arms are like driftwood on the beach..." KateSayid
1. kate

Tender

By: Gaeriel

Disclaimer: _Lost_ belongs to people who are much more talented and creative than I.

Summary: "His arms were driftwood on the beach..." Kate/Sayid. Short, but I think this ship needs to be jumpstarted.

The first thing Kate noticed about him was his arms. Well, maybe not the first thing. First, she noticed that he was a man and Arab and not Arab-American and his hair was messy just like everyone else's. But the first thing that Kate _cared_ that she noticed about him was his arms. His arms were driftwood on the beach; all brown, knotted muscle and hard edges. The first time she thought the metaphor, it almost made her hate him. They were trapped on a desert island and he was like driftwood.

"_Kate..." Sayid whispers between her parted lips. It is dark, or maybe she only thinks so because he is so close to her. She hasn't been this close to anyone since her Air Marshall, or maybe Sawyer the last time he (ass) got in her face. Kate tries to push those two people out of her mind. She tries to think only of Sayid and how the experience of his lips on hers is too good to waste by thinking about bad people and all the bad things she's done._

"_I don't deserve you," Kate says. Or rather, she doesn't. It's likely she's afraid that he'll agree with her. It's even more likely she's afraid he won't. Kate has found that it is more difficult to hate yourself when somebody is there to love you._

The immediate hours after the crash were the worst. Kate spent most of them wandering through the jungle, herself feeling like driftwood. Only she was the kind still drifting. The sun had bleached her. She could remember once being fearless, but for the life of her she could do nothing but shake. Then she found Jack and he brought her back to the others. That's when she saw Sayid, unnerved, yes, but still of form with purpose in his motions. And his arms, so strong, were driftwood. Kate always saw everything that wasn't obvious; he had managed to get himself beached and she was getting sick from the waves.

That was when she almost hated him, but then he fixed the radio and Kate realized that she was being stupid. People weren't like wood. Wood couldn't bleed. Wood didn't look at her with moon-wide brown eyes, nor did it speak to her as if its every breath was something for her alone. But Sayid could. And he did so by leaning in so close that she still can't believe her heart didn't jump out of her mouth and into his.

"_Though it might as well have," Kate murmurs._

"_Hmm...?" He says. They are finished now and are lying just within the forest where the floor is still sand (it gets EVERYWHERE) but the trees are still tall and green. His arm is casually thrown across her waist. His face is pressed less casually against her neck. He has told her that, after he sets up those transceivers, his next project will be creating a map of her body based on the aesthetics of her scent. Her neck, apparently, is to be one of the larger nations._

"_Tell me something true," she says, "or at least something about you before."_

_He thinks hard for a minute. Kate closes her eyes because it really is dark and she can see his "thinking cap" expression so much better in her own mind._

_Finally, he says, "I think I am genuinely, truly, afraid of crocodiles."_

_Kate frowns, "They have crocodiles in Iraq?"_

"_No," with his thumb and forefinger against her chin, he moves her head to face his. Sayid's eyes are dark and adoring. "But I think, if I met one, I wouldn't like it."_

_She laughs. His sense of humor isn't always... well... humorous, but it's all for her and she likes it._

"_Now, your turn. Tell me something true about yourself."_

_She responds instantly, "You are the only person I've never lied to."_

_He kisses her in a way that suits her. Very little tongue, with an emphasis on lip-nibbling. _

"_But then again, we haven't known each other very long."_

_This time, he laughs. They fit each other very well._

He had a way of looking at her that was very tender. He could be quick to anger, but was often just as deft with kindness. She had never met anyone quite like him. She made a habit of seeking him out when Jack was busy or moping and Claire asleep. He liked to talk to her and she liked to listen. She told him that she thought his arms looked like driftwood, especially when she and he sat next to each other because she was almost the color of sand now. He told her that he thought her eyes looked like his dead wife's.

She hadn't known what to say; because no one ever does in situations like that, so she just sat next to him while he didn't cry. Not long after that, he kissed her for the first time. But it was awhile after that before they were lying against each other_ just within the forest where the floor is still sand (it gets EVERYWHERE) but the trees are still tall and green._ They took their time, lots of time, with lots of tender glances and soft words to sustain them from one moment to the next.

_The hair on the back of her neck stands on end even before the eerie, mechanical whirring sound begins. It's strange, but now awareness of it has become like a sixth sense. She can feel the chomping of trees in her skeletal frame before she can hear it in the air. For a second she stiffens and regrets (for the first and only time) being in the jungle with Sayid and not someone she wouldn't die for. However, Kate soon realizes that the noise is far off._

"_What do you think it is?" She asks, not really caring for an answer. Everyone can speculate until the stars drop out of the sky, but in the end that's all there is: speculation. _

"_I think it's death," he says. "Sometimes I wonder if all this isn't one last dream before we die. I've had nightmares where I am still on the plane. I am afraid every night I go to sleep that I will wake and be on fire and dead."_

_The noise continued and then stopped._

"_I think that is the sound of the plane crashing. I think we are all on borrowed time."_

_She shivers and wraps his arms tighter around her. She is not cold, but she heard somewhere that when somebody shivers like that it means that someone has walked over their grave. She can smell Sayid and she decides that he even smells like driftwood. As she falls asleep, she thinks that if she's going to wake up dead tomorrow, then this is the best dream she's ever had._


	2. sayid

I want to give a very, very big thank you to all you sweet people who reviewed my fic. It meant a lot to me, and I've decided to add another chapter for you guys. Alas, I cannot promise more than this. It's possible that I'm going to have to claw myself back up from a very deep hole resulting from a Western Civ exam. Damn bluebooks...

_Sunlight drips off the leaves of the jungle canopy and bursts upon the ground in swollen patches. There is a beautiful woman lying next to him and Sayid is slightly mystified that he isn't dead yet._

"_I'm not supposed to be here," he thinks, aloud or silent he can't tell. It's possible that everyone has gone a little bit crazy since they crashed. It's probable. _

_Back home, he had been a good man. He knew it, and that was enough._

He had been raised in a proud home, by hardworking and dutiful parents. He was nineteen when he married a girl with sad eyes and a sweet smile. She died in '90 during a bombing that leveled their neighborhood and he enlisted not long after, as was proper. He was very careful to do everything properly, according to his father, to his community, to Allah. And he did that all very well.

Then one day, he was on a plane, and it crashed into a very small island somewhere in the Pacific.

He thought it was safe to say that propriety could go to Hell at that point.

_"Sayid?" Kate said. __How did he get here?_

_"Yes?" He _really_ should not be here._

_She is hesitant, her bottom lip caught between opposing forces of top and bottom teeth. He can imagine a million theoretical responses lying on the tip of her tongue. Regrets, proclamations of undying love, anger, fear, resentment, all of which are concepts he is experiencing right now, and sentiments he hopes she does not share. He can't help think that she is the ball bearing of his internal combustion engine. She is the only real thing that can make him work. It is hard to believe in anything when everything is mashed together unintelligibly. He watches as her brow furrows in concentration. He wonders if she has come to the same understanding._

_"I think you're lying on my shirt."_

_Or maybe not._

_"Ah. Sorry." It's late enough anyway. He watches as she gets dressed. This is as good a place to be as any._

Kate wasn't, he had learned rather early on, very much different than the women he had known in Iraq. She was strong, yes, but no stronger than many Muslim women and possessed the same, characteristic quietude of his mother and sisters. And of his wife.

"She is not that different," was the first, traitorous, insight concerning Kate that wormed it's way into his psyche the night he and she and that small group of theirs encountered the polar bear. "She is not that different from you."

His religion said she was. It was the very thing that had created him, sustained him.

"She is not that different."

Faith. He revolved around it. It was why he stayed behind on the beach. Someone would come for them. He could not love her because someone would come for him and he would have to go back home.

Back home, he had been a good man. He wasn't quite sure if that was also true for the island.

_He is staring out onto the beach when she puts her chin on his shoulder. _

"_What are you looking for?" She asks._

_Peace of mind._

"_A plane," he says, "I want one to not be there."_

_She squints out onto the horizon, "It looks like you got your wish. It's not what I would have picked, but..." she trails off. It's a sentence that was never imagined to have an ending, much like their relationship. She doesn't understand, he thinks, the first time she doesn't guess his meaning before the thought is even fully formed. She is here and he is here because they both believe that someone is coming for them. He just doesn't want anyone to succeed._

_He doesn't want this to end._

_Back home, he had been a good man. Here, he has damned twenty-four people to crust up on a beach of sand and glass. Maybe a few of them will die of sunstroke, or dehydration, but it is his duty to stay and watch. An empty promise, a final salute to an ideology that he put away when he put her on. He is not a good man anymore, but as Kate slips her arms around his waist, he finds that such things are not so important here._


End file.
